Yesterday, I worked for the first time ever in my new studio! It’s not quite finished, but it’s finished enough to move in and start creating! For the last 4 years I have had several stations throughout my house for each of my on going creative pursuits – beading and wire weaving, mixed media art and art journaling, and sewing. I’ve made progress here and there, sometimes great progress, but I continually felt fragmented. I couldn’t easily switch from one thing to another…..but now, I can. And guess what – all the tables and desks fit and there are plenty of plugs too for lots of light (another thing that I have struggled to rectify). So I know it looks a little plain, but give it time. I’ll be posting more regularly now, I’m sure.

My first piece of work featured a quote I came across yesterday morning in the book I am currently reading called “The Motivation Manifesto” by Brendon Burchard. It so perfectly encapsulated my feelings about this point in my life and in my hopes for my studio:

Through the active expression of our genuine nature, and the steady efforts to master our minds and move our lives forward, we can finally, after all this time, experience the freedom and joy we deserve in life

I’ve worked long and hard for this. I’m ready for freedom and joy bigger and brighter that my mind and heart have ever imagined. I can’t wait to share it all with you!

I’ve taken several online art courses and it’s a fantastic way to learn either self paced or along with a group. Recently, I joined the Radiant Faces self-paced workshop hosted by the incredible Effy Wild. Out of all of the classes I have taken to date, this is by far the best I’ve ever taken. I grew by leaps and bounds and I’m proud of every single piece of art I made. It’s an incredible value for the money. You get 9 different lessons plus an additional 9 video walk throughs of Effy doing the each lesson herself – all for $45. The instructors are some of the best and hottest in the mixed media world and it was amazing to be exposed to so many different methods and projects in one class. I went into this class without any real drawing experience – the last time I drew a face was in high school and I was never very proud of my drawings then and I came out with confidence and skill. I’ve added the faces I created to this post.

It’s been a while since I posted to this site and I realize in hind sight that I should never ever have stopped. But the nature of hind sight is being able to analyze our decisions yesterday with the wisdom of today. I frankly never saw this coming, so alas, here we are.

A little background: Two years ago I received a fabulous Valentine’s day present – really it was the best Valentine’s day present since the birth of my daughter Amelia who was born 15 years ago – my boyfriend purchased a domain for me – aguasulis.com. So I started using aguasulis.com for everything and let my WordPress sites go dormant. Fast forward two years and we break up and he turns off my domain. Granted, I am the idiot who never transferred it to my name before the breakup – but it was seriously one of the lowest things anyone has ever done to me. Aguasulis.com is on everything. So here I am scrambling for what to do, because I frankly don’t have the time or the money to pursue him legally. Every time I think about the whole situation my blood boils and I frankly don’t want to think about it anymore. So I am dusting off and I am moving forward.

So what have I been doing all this time? I have been exploring turning my art, professional and creative skills into a business. I’ve been making a lot of art, weaving a lot of wire, teaching, consulting, and doing a great deal of reading and research about running a business.

My theme for the next 6 months is “Explore.” The loss of my domain has caused me to think outside the box, and it has reminded me that the only thing I can do wrong as a result of the situation is to stop. I’m simply not someone who gives up.

I look forward to having you on my journey with me and please share your experiences in the comments or on your own blogs.

I am so overdue posting, had to start with that obligatory comment. Sadly I was way overdue working in my journal. I got to the point where I could not stand it anymore. I feel much better now. I have been creating, but mostly working on jewelry. Trying to get things up on Etsy. Trying to get some classes together. Emphasis on “trying.”
Work has taken a front seat lately, which had its good points. I honestly love my job and am very grateful for that. I get to be creative while making a living. I get to teach. I am one of the few who gets paid for her passion. But often passion must be suppressed in the professional world. Lately my passion has been getting me into sticky situations. I need to learn to be more humble. It’s tough.
So this page is about my struggle because I feel like I am incapable of putting on a “poker face” to hide what is really going on with me. Despite all of the work I have done, when I am hungry, angry, lonely, and/or tired, all decorum and emotional control feels and often is impossible. I just don’t have a poker face. What you see is what you get with me.

So I’m taking another wonderful class from artist Kelly Kilmer called “Swatches: Little Paper Books.” The idea is to work small, to use bits of things, to work with recycled materials and explore doing things differently than you have done before. I’m loving the class and the challenge faced with working small. I’ve worked small in the past – created scads of Artist Trading Cards, but with my journals, I’ve always worked pretty large. My typical journals are 8 1/2 x 11 pages. So working in this little 5 x 5 inch book is quite different for me. You will see I’ve come up with a few creative solutions so far. As always, I’m learning alot. I cannot say enough great things about Kelly’s classes.

In making my book, I decided to use a recycled street newspaper that is published here in Portland – The Mercury. I picked it up one day because I liked the cover image and I have been saving it for a while. I realized that I could cut the paper apart retaining only the top left corner and this would give me the headlines for all the pages with which to play with. I bound the pages together by hand using Kelly’s instructions. Here’s the resulting book.

I haven’t decided how I’m going to alter the cover yet; I think I’m saving that for last. Other things I decided to do is have curious tabs here and there and also try and have a paint swatch used on every page in some way. The following are the pages I’ve completed within the last seven days – the first week of class.

Now some of the pages have special details worth mentioning. The first is that the page for day 2 includes a transparency cover that may be lifted up so you can more clearly read the journaling beneath.

And day 4 is a set of doors which opens to reveal the rest of the page.

All the pages are individuals with the exception of day 1 – took a whole spread. I’ve tried to keep the adjacent pages color themed similar so that visually the spreads look good except that they are for completely separate prompts. Here are the spreads for the first seven days.

So far, the only combination/page I’m not completely happy with is day 7. I am not too fond with the green along the bottom. I’m thinking of a way to fix that.